Bret Harte

Bret Harte is remembered as the author of
adventurous stories such as "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The
Outcasts of Poker Flat," set along the western mining frontier.
As
the first great success in the local colorist school, Harte for a
brief time was perhaps the best-known writer in America -- such
was the appeal of his romantic version of the gunslinging West.
Outwardly realistic, he was one of the first to introduce
low-life characters -- cunning gamblers, gaudy prostitutes, and
uncouth robbers -- into serious literary works. He got away with
this (as had Charles Dickens in England, who greatly admired
Harte's work) by showing in the end that these seeming derelicts
really had hearts of gold.